


Second Chances

by LordofLies



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, kami is a main character!!, parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordofLies/pseuds/LordofLies
Summary: On the eve of King Piccolo’s defeat at the hands of the child Goku, Kami makes a choice to take responsibility for the evil he unleashed upon the Earth.  He seeks out the reborn Piccolo, full of grim resolve, but what he finds is not what he was expecting.  The young demon has no memory of his former life, and Kami cannot find it in himself to let him suffer at human hands.Can a child born of spite learn to love the world his father hated?  Kami does not know, but he cannot let this last chance for atonement slip through his fingers.





	Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> So, this fic was actually something I started writing in 2011, never posted, and left sitting in a folder for six years, and now I've come back to it and I'm bringing it back to life! The first two chapters have gone through a LOT of editing, but I tried to keep as much as I could of what I'd originally written. Everything chapter three onward is going to be entirely new content though. I'm not sure how long this is going to be overall, but I'm shooting for about 30-40k words and for it to be finished by September. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy the ride! Piccolo and Kami have always been very special characters to me and I feel like there was a certain charm to the original Dragon Ball anime that got lost in DBZ as the stakes just kept getting higher. So this is a tribute to how much I love those early story lines, especially the Piccolo ones, and an exploration of Kami and Piccolo's relationship and perhaps what could have been, if Piccolo had been given his chance at redemption a little earlier.

In the land of Korin, rain thundered down from the sky like bullets, piercing the earth with a bitter, stinging cold.  Lightning crackled across the roiling clouds, tearing the sky apart like a tapestry, only for the darkness to knit it back together.

Kami’s gazed over the edge of the Lookout and into the black sea below, brooding. In his time as guardian, he had seen many storms.  From the fresh, pouring squalls of spring that drew life up from the dry soil, to tempests that claimed thousands of lives and laid to waste once-prosperous lands.  In terms of destructive force, this storm was not remarkable.  And yet there was a quality to it, whispering in the bleakness of the sky and fierceness of the wind, that spoke of ill omens.

He knew why the storm had come.  He had felt it just as the earth itself had… that awakening power far below.

“Piccolo…” he whispered, throat tightening.  He was truly the King of Demons, to survive even after death.  Not even Goku had been able to truly defeat him, and Kami feared this new reincarnation was going to be far, far more powerful than his predecessor.  Powerful enough to defeat Goku and destroy the world. 

Even if Kami kept the boy on the Lookout and trained him for three more years until the next Tenkaichi Budokai, Piccolo would train as well—guided by his father’s memories of hatred and conquest, until he was even stronger than Goku.  There was no victory in sight; the clouds of evil were so thick that not even Kami could see any hope shining through them.

His grip on his staff tightened.  Too long had he kept himself holed up in his floating palace in the sky.  Too long had he watched, and never acted.  This evil that stalked the earth was his own creation, but it was humanity who had paid the price for Kami’s sins twice over now, and the world be damned if he was going to sit back and let them be pushed to the brink a third time.

With a swirl of his cape, Kami turned from the edge and back towards the palace.  He could sense Goku, sleeping peacefully in his room.  He felt guilty about doing this without first telling the boy.  Such a brave child had the right to know that Kami did not plan on returning from this journey he was about to make.  But Kami could not bear to tell him, and he did not want the boy to try and stop him, because Kami knew that when it came to this, he was weak.  He might allow Goku to turn him from this path.  Even a god fears death, after all.

Mr. Popo was meditating quietly in the entrance of the palace, waiting for the guardian to arrive.  As Kami approached, the faithful genie looked up, his usually smiling mouth bent into a worried frown.

“Mr. Popo,” Kami said, without looking at his friend.

“Yes, Kami-sama?” the genie replied, voice quavering.

Kami was silent for a moment.  He could feel the rain beating against the earth below like the tears of heaven.

“Take care of Goku for me,” he whispered finally, before fading away.

“Kami-sama!” Mr. Popo cried, leaping to his feet.  He looked frantically around for the Earth’s guardian, but it was already too late.  Kami was gone.

~*~

Rainwater had penetrated through the lush field and mixed with the soil below to form a thick, soft mud.  It clung to the soles of Kami’s boots and soaked into his bones.  He looked up at the tortured sky, and felt once again the frailty of earthly things. 

He walked the rain-soaked earth, not as a god, but just another mortal creature, no less lost than any other.  Kami gripped his wooden staff tightly as he sloughed through the mire to the woods beyond.  As the trees drew nearer, the smell of smoke penetrated through the storm.

Not ten yards from him was a small cottage, or rather, the remains of one.  Where once had stood a quaint little home, now only a skeletal frame of smoldering timbers and broken rubble remained.  Kami coughed, trying to clear the ash and smoke from his lungs. 

“Am I already too late?” he asked himself aloud.  Fear that the newborn Piccolo had already claimed his first victim snapped tight around Kami’s heart.  He approached the ruined building cautiously, searching for signs of casualty.

Ash streaked the broken walls, and shattered fragments of glass littered the muddy earth.  The interior of the building’s frame was filled with a rank, dark sludge that could have been the remains of a thatched roof.  He saw no sign of bodies, however, and prayed that whoever had once lived here had escaped with their lives.

A glimmer of white in the ruins caught his eye, and Kami approached, wiping away the gritty muck to reveal something disturbingly familiar.  It was a broken egg shell, and Kami knew that it was Piccolo’s.  His suspicions had been correct, it seemed.  This destruction had been his counterpart’s doing.

Kami brushed the rough surface of the shell, thinking.  After a moment, he freed the larger fragments from the mud and slipped them into the pocket of his robe.

Piccolo’s energy flickered, strangely faint, from the forest beyond.  It should have been stronger, which puzzled Kami, but he _was_ newly hatched.  His strength would grow in time, although Kami had no plans to let it.

He gave the ruined cottage one last look before continuing on his way, the broken shards of Piccolo’s egg resting heavy in his pocket.  As he approached the tree line, Kami noticed a dark shape upon the ground.  Horrified, he approached, the odor of death faint, but unmistakable.

It wasn’t a person, to his moderate relief.  It was a dog.  Jaws open, neck snapped.  Its sightless white eyes glittered with rainwater. 

Kami turned away, repulsed, and hurried towards the woods.  He feared he would find more bodies the closer he and Piccolo came to their fated reunion.  He prayed, though he did not know to whom, that the newborn Piccolo was not already a murderer—that he would never have the chance to be.

There was no doubt in Kami’s heart that he would destroy this evil before it could take any more innocent lives, even if it meant his own destruction.  For the sake of the Earth and its people, he would pay the highest price—as so many already had, while he looked on helplessly.

He weaved through the forest like a ghost, hoping to retain the element of surprise when he caught up to Piccolo.  The darkness and the rain helped to conceal him, but they also concealed his enemy.  Even with Kami’s sharp eyes, the forest would not yield Piccolo to him.  As the night wore on, the cold and the damp proved to be greater foes than Kami first realized.  Although he was earth’s guardian, he was still a creature of flesh and blood, and not immune to frailty of the flesh.  His joints ached and his muscles burned with the cold.  If he could not find Piccolo soon, the task would only grow more difficult.

Now deep within the forest, Kami paused, taking a moment to catch his breath and observe his surroundings.  The woods were thick and dark, and the unusually cold May air hung around him like a heavy shroud while the freezing moisture condensed on his skin.  It was all rather dismal, Kami thought, as the looming trees seemed to reach down towards the earth to whisper and claw at him.  His resolve was already starting to weaken as the hope of finding Piccolo began to wane, and the anger that kept him from thinking of his own impending death went with it.

Suddenly, a soft moan broke the steady sound of rain, and Kami whipped around faster than the blink of an eye.  The noise came again, somewhere closer to the earth.  Carefully, Kami lowered himself to the ground, tilting his head to the side to peer beneath the thorny undergrowth.  His breath hitched as he saw what lay curled beneath the broad green leaves and tangled vines.

It wasn’t ugly, at least by Kami’s standards, though surely any human who happened across it would have recoiled in terror and revulsion.  Bright green in color, the infant lay curled into a tight ball beneath the shrub’s protective canopy.  It shivered with cold and let out another moan.  As the shock began to dissipate, Kami realized that the infant’s face and skull were stained with purple blood, and its small arms and legs were drawn in tight against its naked body.  It whimpered again, letting out low gasps of pain as it fought to take in ragged breaths of the thick, cold air.

Kami swallowed, the last of his resolve washing away in the rain.  This was not the meeting he had imagined.  Even as a newborn, this child was Piccolo Daimao reincarnated.  His purpose was revenge.  His mind knew only cruelty and conquest.  So, what was this before him?  Kami did not understand.

This was no child, he reminded himself.  It was a monster.  He thought of the mangled dog he had passed on his way here, and wondered again what had befallen its owners.  This child might already be a killer, as his sire had been.  It couldn’t matter what he looked like, or how Kami felt.  Kami had to destroy him, for the sake of all he held dear.

Face twisted up in a mask of anguish at the task before him, Kami raised a hand to strike down his enemy.  His claws were poised, glittering with rainwater as his muscles tensed to deal the deathblow upon his counterpart.  He drew his last breath, and—

The infant began to cry.

Kami’s hand dropped limply to his side as small streams of tears began to run down the young Piccolo’s face.  He sighed, holding his head in his hands.  He couldn’t bring himself to kill a child, no matter how evil—and he had been a fool to think he could.  But what could he do?  He couldn’t kill Piccolo, and he couldn’t leave him—either to his suffering, or the risk of others suffering at his hands.  That left only one option.

Swallowing back any remaining doubt, Kami reached gingerly towards the weeping infant.  The reaction was instantaneous.  As soon as the tips of Kami’s claws brushed Piccolo’s skin, the demon child’s eyes snapped open.  He let out a snarl, surprising Kami enough that the guardian’s hand snapped back instinctively, giving Piccolo the time he needed to scramble blindly away.

For someone not yet a day old, Piccolo was fast.  Kami barely had enough time to lunge forward and grab him by the ankle before he disappeared into the underbrush.  The demon child screamed and clawed as Kami reeled him in, trying to hush the thrashing infant.  He tried to gather Piccolo up, pinning his tiny, but powerfully strong, arms to his sides so that he could not claw at Kami in his rage. 

Unfortunately for Kami, he had forgotten that children possess teeth as well as hands, and this particular child had not just teeth, but fangs.

The guardian bit back a yelp of pain as he felt his counterpart’s sharp incisors sink into the soft, aging muscle of his arm.  He gripped the child tightly to his chest, hissing out soothing words between clenched teeth in an effort to calm the feral child in his arms.

“You’re safe.  You’re safe.  I won’t hurt you.  You’re safe.  I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he whispered, trying to ignore the pain and the feeling of hot blood running down his arm.  Slowly, as Kami continued his litany, Piccolo’s struggling began to lessen, though his grip on the guardian’s arm did not.  Once his thrashing had stopped completely, Piccolo unclamped his jaws and eased his fangs from Kami’s arm, turning to look up at his elder with wide, jet black eyes.

Kami swallowed down the lump in his throat as he met those eyes.  Something here was not as it should be.  He could see fear in them, and a wild anger, but they were not the hollow, pitiless eyes that he had come to know so intimately.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.  Piccolo opened his mouth, but no sound came out.  Kami frowned.  “Do you know who _you_ are?”  Piccolo only stared at him.  The rain beat down on them, washing away the blood and dirt from Piccolo’s face.  He drew his lips back, revealing bloody teeth, but said nothing.  There was no kind of understanding in his eyes, and Kami felt a strange kind of pity swell inside him.

“You’re safe,” he whispered to the young Piccolo in his arms, the words feeling sour and hollow on his tongue.  Who was he to promise such a thing, when only moments ago his goal had been to end this child’s life?

With a heavy feeling in his chest, Kami straightened up, still holding the infant Piccolo tightly.  He looked up at the sky, a patch of it visible through the canopy of leaves.  The clouds were still grey as the sea, and the rain fell like needles against his skin.  He looked down at the child in his arms, noticing that Piccolo’s eyes had begun to flutter closed.  His head dipped dangerously, almost bumping against Kami’s chest.

“What am I doing?” Kami whispered, squeezing his eyes shut as the wind whistled around them and the feeling of being faster and more insubstantial than light overtook them.

Before the next raindrop hit the ground, Kami and Piccolo were gone.  The woods lay silent once more, save for the steady beat of rain upon the forest floor.


End file.
